Daniel Ellsberg thanks Snowden

The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers is praising Edward Snowden, saying he’s “impressed” by the man who says he revealed secret National Security Agency surveillance programs.

“I’m very impressed by what I’ve heard in the last couple of hours including Snowden’s own video here. I think he’s done an enormous service, incalculable service,” Daniel Ellsberg said Sunday night on CNN. “It can’t be overestimated to this democracy. It gives us a chance, I think, from drawing back from the total surveillance state that we could say we’re in process of becoming, I’m afraid we have become. That’s what he’s revealed.”

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Ellsberg said that despite a “clear law” outlawing such leaks, if he had been in Snowden’s position he would have done the same thing.

“If I had known that the NSA, the National Security Agency, as I say, to which I had access, if I had known that they were spying on every American multiple times, different phone lines, bank data, credit cards, GPS, everything else, if I had known that, I would have done just what he’s done. I would have broken that law of civil disobedience,” he said.

In 1971, Ellsberg gave The New York Times and The Washington Post classified documents about the conduct of the Vietnam War and became the first person prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. The case was later thrown out after it was revealed the government had illegally wiretapped Ellsberg.

Ellsberg said he has waited “decades” for someone like Snowden. “Decades in a sense that of seeing somebody who really was prepared to risk his life for his country as a civilian. To show the kind of courage that we expect of people on the battlefield,” he said on CNN.

Ellsberg said he fully expects Snowden to be prosecuted, a case which he said will bring up the constitutionality of the government’s surveillance practice.

“I have no doubt that this violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and probably other parts of the Bill of Rights and should have been exposed,” Ellsberg said. “Can it really be a crime to expose crime? Or that’s never been judged by any court. Including the Supreme Court. I think this is a good time to look at it.”